Committee approves MARTA plan to use bus cameras to deter parking in BRT lanes, members press for privacy safeguards

The Georgia House Transportation Committee voted to pass House Bill 638, authorizing the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) to place cameras on buses to identify vehicles parked in designated bus rapid transit (BRT) lanes in Atlanta.

Sponsors said the cameras would be used to collect information about cars that potentially violate the lanes, but enforcement would be limited to ticketing parked vehicles. “The purpose of this bill is to allow MARTA to collect information about how many cars are potentially, going to violate these lanes, but they are only going to ticket parked vehicles,” Jennifer LaRosa, head of government relations for MARTA, told the committee.

The bill text, as read to the committee, prohibits stopping or parking a motor vehicle in a designated transit lane. It establishes fines of $50 for the first violation, $100 for the second and $150 for the third, which sponsors said mirror Georgia distracted-driving fines. LaRosa also said the citation would not assess points on a driver’s license and would not be part of an operating record that could affect insurance.

Under the bill, fines collected would go to MARTA for public-safety purposes, not to the City of Atlanta. The measure requires visible signage and prescribes a six-month warning period before citations would be issued. Sponsors said the legislation includes a sunset date of Jan. 1, 2030.

Committee members raised privacy and data-retention concerns, pressing for clearer rules about how long images would be stored, who would have access and whether facial-recognition or biometric analysis could be applied. LaRosa said MARTA would work with the committee on data-retention rules and that vendors in this space often have policies such as blurring faces and deleting nonviolations. “They only keep 8 seconds worth of a violation. They delete anything that is not a violation basically immediately,” she said.

Members also asked who could use the lanes and who could issue citations. Committee testimony clarified that multiple transit providers would be permitted to use the BRT lanes, including regional operators and emergency vehicles, but only MARTA buses would be authorized to issue tickets under the bill’s enforcement mechanism.

Lawmakers discussed prior legislation addressing vendor-held traffic data and the Open Records Act, suggesting the committee could adopt language to limit disclosure of vendor data that might otherwise be subject to records requests. Josh, a transportation department staff member who spoke to committee questions about traffic-camera record-keeping, said GDOT generally does not store continuous camera footage because of the volume of data; stored footage is limited and used for incident playback.

Several members asked that the bill be revised to add explicit data-protection and retention language before final passage on the floor. Committee sponsors said they expect to return with tightened language addressing data handling and vendor access. The committee passed the bill by voice vote with no recorded opposition.

The bill’s supporters said the cameras are intended to improve bus travel times by reducing blocked BRT lanes, citing delivery vehicles and stopped service trucks as frequent causes of obstruction. The committee also heard that MARTA plans an education campaign with neighborhood groups and business communities, and that MARTA has changed its advertising policy on buses to reduce nonessential ads.

The measure will proceed to the next legislative stage; committee members requested follow-up language about data retention, vendor cybersecurity and limits on biometric use before floor consideration.